Given the accessibility of games, Fiellin and other Yale researchers see them as an ideal way to teach kids the skills they need to prevent HIV infection. For more than two years, the researchers have been developing "Playforward: Elm City Stories," a game aimed at preventing the spread of HIV among minority adolescents.

The game -- which should be complete and ready for testing in clinical trials by November -- is meant to be played on an iPad.

It creates an interactive world in which players create an avatar (or virtual character) based on themselves, and face a series of challenges and choices. Some of these scenarios are fairly simple. For instance, a young female player might be asked how she'd react if a popular boy with a bad reputation asked her to go upstairs at a party.

Clearly, she should say no. But how does she do that without looking like a wimp in front of her friends?

"These scenarios present challenging situations in which kids generally know the right answer," Fiellin said. "What they don't know is how to negotiate around the situation such that they save face but also remain safe.

"Our goal with the game, based on theory and the scientific literature, is that it teaches them the cognitive steps and behavioral skills to negotiate challenging situations in order to reduce their chances of bad outcomes. The beauty of the game is that it presents these interactions between characters in a dynamic and real-life way."

The game contains about six years worth of choices. When it's complete, players read an epilogue about how their choices affected their lives. Fiellin said kids playing the game will probably make some missteps -- and that's OK.

"We want the kids to make mistakes, because this isn't real," she said. "They'll learn, and maybe in real life they won't make the same mistake."

To help the game best reach its target audience, the Yale team met with about three dozen adolescents from New Haven to get an idea of what their behaviors are, and what would make the video game relevant to them. The researchers also worked with Digitalmill, a Portland, Me. game development and consulting firm and the Pittsburgh-based game design studio Schell Games.

Sabrina Haskell, a senior designer with Schell and project director on Elm City stories, echoed Fiellin's point that the game can serve as a "dry run" for life for some kids.

"Games are a place where you can fail without it being a true failure," Haskell said. "If real life, if you fail once, it can have significant consequences."